Obama begins birthday weekend with round of golf

WASHINGTON –  President Barack Obama kicked off his birthday weekend Saturday with a round of golf with friends and a getaway to Camp David.

Obama, who turns 52 on Sunday, left the White House just after 8 a.m. EDT -- that's unusually early for the half-hour motorcade ride to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland -- to squeeze in some golf before the celebration shifted to the presidential retreat nestled in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains.

Before leaving, officials said Obama's counterterrorism adviser updated him on a potential al-Qaida threat that led the State Department on Friday to issue a global travel warning to Americans and order the weekend closure of 21 embassies and consulates across the Muslim world.

The White House said the president's three golfing foursomes included some of his friends from Hawaii, where he grew up, and Chicago, where he lived before becoming president, along with current and former aides.

Among them were childhood friends Bobby Titcomb and Mike Ramos, and Chicago pals Marty Nesbitt and Eric Whitaker. White House aides Marvin Nicholson and Sam Kass, an assistant chef, rounded out the group, along with Reggie Love, who for years had been Obama's personal assistant, or "body man," and basketball buddy until he left the White House in late 2011 to work on getting an MBA.

Due to the limited number of seats, only the winners at golf -- Love, Kass and two other players -- got to join Obama on the presidential helicopter. The losers went the long way, by car.

First lady Michelle Obama traveled to Camp David separately.

The White House said little about how Obama would celebrate on Saturday night and Sunday, but the birthday wishes started rolling in early.

Via: Fox News

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VIDEO: Cavuto: Remember when kids were grateful for any job they could find?

Yesterday on his show, Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto dedicated his daily “common sense” segment to the good old days when kids (and adults) were grateful for any job they could find. Remember when any job was a good job? I do. I remember my first real job as a restaurant hostess. The day I got hired, I was the happiest kid in the world. I made minimum wage and even though I bussed tables, the waiters rarely split their tips with me. But guess what? I didn’t care because I had a job and worked hard anyway.

Cavuto, in only a way that he can, explained the entitlement/welfare culture surrounding the current job market and brings us back to when people worked their way through the system rather than asking for a handout.

In the end, it really is pathetic how good jobs in this economic environment have been treated as disposable.

Via: Hot Air

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VIDEO: Sen. Collins: Obamacare's 30-Hour Rule Will Damage Businesses

Obamacare has "perverse incentives" that allow employers to cut their employees' work hours, says Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who has introduced a bill to change the healthcare law's definition of full time work from 30 hours a week to 40.

Collins, in Saturday's GOP address, noted that under Obamacare, anyone working an average of 30 hours a week is considered full-time, meaning many employers may cut their hours so they won't have to provide them with insurance.

A 40-hour work week is full-time, we all know that," said Collins.

 

She noted in her address that her family founded a small business in Maine more than 160 years ago that continues to be run by two of her brothers.

"Our economy is built on millions of enterprises just like ours," she said. "It’s not easy to survive in today’s economy. But these employers remain our nation’s job creators. We should be doing all we can to promote policies to help them survive and thrive."

She also agreed that healthcare reform should provide people with access to quality and affordable care "while encouraging economic growth. That’s not what is happening under Obamacare."

Instead, Collins said, Obamacare discourages small businesses from creating jobs and hiring new workers, and "has perverse incentives for employers to reduce the number of hours that their employees can work." 

Most small businesses want to provide health insurance, said Collins, but can't afford to do so under Obamacare.

Via: Newsmax

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What happened to that 5% unemployment rate promised by the stimulus?

James Pethokoukis has a devastating chart and blog post over at AEI outlining the utter, complete, and total failure of the president's economic policies.

On the surface, the July jobs report - the unemployment rate dipped to 7.4% last month thanks to a shrinking workforce as the economy added a disappointing 162,000 net new payrolls - is just another dismal data point in America's "new normal" recovery. But it's also an important milestone and metric for judging the Keynesian fiscal experiment known as Obamanomics.

In January 2009, Team Obama economists put together a report - half quantitative analysis, half sales pitch - outlining the potential economic impact of the proposed $800 billion stimulus. (See above chart from that report.) If Congress passed the plan, the report forecasted, the economy would generate enough additional demand, output, and employment that two big things would happen:

First, the unemployment rate would never reach 8%. Unfortunately, we hit 10% unemployment in October 2009. Failure number one.

Second, the unemployment rate would return to its long-term "natural rate" of 5% by July 2013 (a jobless rate, it should be noted, above the low points of the Bush and Clinton presidencies). Labor markets would be back to peak health. The Great Recession would truly and finally be over.

Mission accomplished by this jobless report.

Via: American Thinker

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Mainstream media scream: MSNBC's Hayes befuddled that more crooks in jail means less crime

This week's Mainstream Media Scream features the host of "All In with Chris Hayes" on MSNBC disturbed that the nation is fearful of criminals even though more are in jail.

On Friday night, Hayes was discussing some commentary from Fox's Bill O'Reilly with California Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee when he said:

"What I find most frustrating is that we have seen is incarceration go up at the same time that crime is going down, and yet the fear level is still stoked, even though what we have is, objectively, less murders every year, we have less crime, we are living in a safer society, and we are putting more people in prison."

Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains our pick: "Duh! Just because liberals don't like imprisoning people does not mean it doesn't work to decrease crime if more criminals are incarcerated and thus unable to murder or rob. It's not a paradox, but a basic cause-and-effect outcome which has perplexed the supposedly erudite Hayes."

Rating: Five out of five screams.

Via: Washington Examiner

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‘Progressives’ Advance CA Monopolies

Modern California politics was forged from the Progressive Movement’s “purification” of the political machines and bosses to bring about the reform of monopolistic railroad, insurance and banking trusts that dominated the state. The Progressives reached their apogee a century ago with Gov. Hiram Johnson’s reforms of 1911, especially his initiative, recall and referendum reforms.

Fast-forward to 2013 and “Progressive” has a new meaning in California. “Progressives” are desperately trying to re-monopolize energy, workplace, consumer, healthcare and poultry farming industries to advance the state’s environmental laws.

The U.S. states and Congress are beginning to push back against California’s new “landmark” laws that mainly use environmentalism to trump the Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution and anti-trust and consumer protection laws. The Interstate Commerce Clause gives Congress the complete power to regulate trade among the states, giving America a vast free-trade zone that has been essential to our prosperity.

Congress is trying to counter California’s use of environmentalism as way to re-legitimate monopolization.

Green Chemistry Law as covert CA bailout bill

The Green Chemistry initiative is winding its way through the California Legislature in Senate Bill 498, sponsored by state Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, which would further regulate toxic chemicals; and in Assembly Bill 597, by Assemblyman Brian Dahle, R-Shasta, which would redefine all chemicals as hazardous until approved by the state.  Once enacted, the Green Chemistry Law would create a trade barrier for out-of-state products that did not conform to California’s chemical standards.

The Green Chemistry Initiative is a bureaucratic process requiring every maker of chemical products to submit data on chemicals in their products to the California Department of Toxic Substances Control. Green chemistry is the “design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances.”  California’s Green Chemistry Law would usurp the federal regulation of chemical substances by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, and effectively would replace California’s existing Proposition 65.

Via: California Political Review

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L.A., Chicago Rank 1 and 2 for Gun Murders; N.O. Has Highest Rate

The Los Angeles and Chicago metropolitan areas had the most gun murders among the nation’s fifty most-populous metropolitan areas in 2009 and 2010 (the latest years for which data is available), according to a report released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

During those two years, 1,141 people were gunned to death in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and 1,139 were gunned to death in the Chicago metropolitan area. The New York metropolitan area ranked third with 1,101 gun homicides.

The Los Angeles, Chicago and New York metropolitan areas also ranked one, two and three for the number of young people, ages 10-19, who were killed by guns in 2009-2010, with 251 10-19 year olds being gunned down in Los Angeles, 213 in Chicago and 203 in New York.

The New Orleans metropolitan area, however, had the highest rate of gun murders, with 19 out of every 100,000 people in the area being gunned to death in 2009-2010.

New Orleans also had the highest rate of gun homicides in which young people, 10-19 years of age, were the victims. 25.6 of every 100,000 in this age bracket in the New Orleans area were gunned to death in 2009-2010.

Via: CNS News

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NSA’s ‘Homeland’ includes Canada, Greenland, Mexico, Central America

Americans now have responsibility for a bunch of new places they can’t find on a map.

It turns out that the National Security Agency considers Canada, Greenland, Mexico and parts of Central America as part of the U.S. “Homeland.”

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein — chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — displayed a diagram that revealed the NSA considers Mexico, Canada, Greenland and parts of Central American as part of the U.S. ‘Homeland.’

Following the 9/11 attacks, the federal government adopted the term ‘Homeland’ to refer to the nation itself. It turns out that designation seems to have taken on a different meaning within the past 12 years, without the broader public’s awareness.

The Atlantic Wire proposed a possible answer: “Is this a way of blending in Canadian and Mexican terror activity disruptions (which, we’ll remind you, is different from actual plots interrupted) to give a larger sense of the NSA’s success at halting terrorism within our borders.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which came into force in 1994, created special economic and trade conditions between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

A North American security perimeter pact, announced in 2011, was recently criticized in the Toronto Star for potentially endangering the sovereignty of Canada.

The NSA and the Department of Homeland Security did not return The Daily Caller’s request for comment by the time of publication.

Via: The Daily Caller

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The Five Demolishes Rangel Over Tea Party ‘Crackers’ Gibe: ‘Desperate,’ Deflecting From His Own Shady Ethics

The Five today unloaded on Democratic congressman Charlie Rangel for likening tea partiers to “white crackers” who opposed civil rights. Andrea Tantaros said Rangel was being “desperate” and “shameful,” suggesting he makes outlandish statements like this to “deflect attention away from him… and his ethical troubles.”

Brian Kilmeade also found it outrageous how Rangel basically accused the GOP of being worse for the country than al-Qaeda in trying to “sabotage” the country. Eric Bolling mockingly scolded Rangel for saying “cracker” instead of “cracka” because the second one is totally not a racist word. Bob Beckel suggested Rangel should be more careful, since the evidence of tea party racism was isolated and not “rampant.”

They also had some choice words for the New Haven Register apologizing over comparing Fox News to the KKK. Dana Perino said “they love to hate,” while Tantaros didn’t buy the supposed sincerity of their apology after basically accusing Fox of “elevating racists.”

Watch the video below, via Fox News:

Via: Mediaite

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